1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to the transfer of high speed bursts of data from a host computer to a plurality of peripheral devices.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Input/output peripheral devices such as digital to analog converters have traditionally been connected to digital computer through special purpose controllers. One or more computer memory addresses are generally assigned to each peripheral device. Where large numbers of input/output channels are required such as in flight simulators or manufacturing processes each peripheral has had its own hardware dedicated address. Such a system is inefficient because a large share of the computer's resources must be devoted to data acquistion and control of peripheral devices. To relieve the computer, commonly called the host computer, from performing input/output operations various microprocessor based devices have been developed to handle input/output operations. Such devices commonly called front-end processors and intellegent peripheral controllers have increased real time system performance by providing greater throughput (the amount of data that the system can handle in a given time) and faster response time (the time needed to perceive and react to an event). The present invention in addition to providing increased system performance is capable of accepting high speed bursts of data from a host computer, further processing the data to be transferred, then distributing the processed data to a large number of peripheral devices. Further, the present invention is capable of assigning data to selected periperhal devices under instructions from the host computer which may be varied dynamically during system operation or may be input by a system operator from a control terminal.